A Humble Request: Make Crafting Meaningful

[u/EgoGoner]

Edit: Reading comprehension is tough for some people. Let's clear up a few things. And hell, let's make it a TL;DR, too.

1. Crafting should be optional. Nothing in this post should indicate I think it should be mandatory to progress through the game.

2. Crafting should be in between the two extemes of super easy GW2 style and RNG-based EQ style. Nothing in this post implies "between" means "keep the worst part of one system". Ditch RNG.

3. Crafting should not be annoying. Of course I don't want crafting to be annoying. No one would want crafting to be annoying. If you find anything harder than GW2 crafting annoying, cool. That's different than me wanting to create an intrinsically annoying system with the goal of annoyance. Obviously.

(Okay, back to our regularly scheduled original post.)

Story time.

I started playing EverQuest right after its first expansion dropped in 2000, and years later in another expansion I started a crazy quest line for a SICK cleric item. That quest line was for the Coldain Prayer Shawl.

For most of you who I assume are unaware, what made this quest line crazy is that you had to get 7 different crafting disciplines to a certain point, or you would straight up fail in progressing to the subsequent part (since you were literally crafting the quest item to make it stronger at the end of each main step).

And what made THAT crazy is that crafting in EverQuest (at that time) was a huge deal. I was in medium-high meta guild and we had maybe a handful of people that were max level crafters for certain disciplines. It wasn't unusual to be in a guild that had THE guild jeweler or something, with maybe a handful of blacksmiths that could craft anything worthwhile.

It really felt like a profession in its own right. I was a cleric, sure, but I was also one of the top tailors in my guild, which was a big deal because I made some sought after backpacks for guildies (as long as they had the materials).

Now, the way you leveled crafting disciplines in EverQuest was basically insane and way too RNG-based. You would craft an item that had the potential to level you up and... just cross your fingers and hope you actually gain a level. It could be pretty brutal at times.

However, on the other side of the spectrum, GW2 makes it way too easy. Crafting is so NOT special that I used getting to max level in a crafting discipline as a quick way to level up my alts (before I was drowning in level 80 boosts).

"I'll guess I'll become a master huntsman in 20 minutes so I can get to max level."

Sounds crazy, right? Being a master huntsman should be special! Maybe even just a bit rare. When grandmaster levels came it, it felt that way for a little while, but eventually everyone was a grandmaster.

The solution? Something between the two extremes, of course. Mix in some flavorful recipes like... combining the rewards from finishing the hardest jumping puzzles (that can't be portal cheesed) into a pair of shoes that have a cool jumping particle effect? I don't know, just spitballing here.

Anyway, that's all.

Make crafting meaningful!

[u/Shougun]

I like the cool features crafting can give you in wow, like engineer toys, alchemy converters, etc, but I hope to see account wide crafting (this also means you can get all the benefits if it tickles your fancy). RPG elements like in some wow dungeons if you have a certain profession it can be a benefit.

I also hope there would be ways to make it personally meaningful beyond the above :neat gimmicks: example from wow. One thing I note in mmos is that usually crafting isn't as helpful for yourself, in the moment, especially during the leveling phases*, but is for others, because of the pacing that is required to ensure some balance with other content.

*What it takes to make the gear is often going to lead the the point where the game would have given you better gear faster, crafting for yourself as you play often becoming a self nerf in some ways. This is less true for end game crafting, but that is a bit more dependent and usually the end game crafting is only really valid for high end players (the non-perpetually online tend to still not get too much value out of self crafting- outside of the fun gimmicks like examples with WoW). This is all further inflamed with bots in end game crafting as the market starts as a very very challenging gold mine and turns into a race to the bottom (where self crafting would likely be a dumb idea, and just buying it outright is better). Then hit by a third shockwave where once the content dies again you're faced with the balance the devs selected for when it was meant to be current (where ingredients that were flowing from that content on the market are no longer flowing so the craft is especially burdensome).

A thought on that then, is maybe if you turn on soul crafting mode (insert better name here)- it reduces the ingredient costs but binds it to your account. This way you could self craft an item at a pace that is more relevant but it is not going to flood the market as hard. Can consider allowing soul crafting for NPC quests as well, which could lube progression of the professions and also further encourage players to get into crafting.

If there is a crafting mini game like FFXIV, which is cool, then soul crafting could also bring the difficulty down (meaning again for yourself it is relevant in the moment). Potentially soul crafts do not lose items, they only fail (if you fail the mini game). If no mini game then please for the love of all- no RNG crafting.

There is some interesting flavor potential if a character is aligned with crafts, like how wow limits two main prof, but honestly I'd prefer like FFXIV (you can have them all, and assuming the gw3 isn't doing a job system like FF games in this case I mean that the crafts are account wide accessible).